The annual gala for all Icelandic medicine students.

One of the things I kept thinking about once I knew I was going to Iceland was the northern light. I wanted to see it so badly. You’d hear and see photos about how beautiful they are. We tried our luck and went with Reykjavík Excursions for a northern lights tour…Succes!

The formula for the northern lights is cold, clear skies away from the pollution of the city lights. Which is also why I kind of felt cheated with Reykjavík Excursions, because they drove about 10-15 km outside the city still nearby street lights, a distance we could’ve practically walked. Without the tour however, we probably would have missed the northern lights and would have mistaken them for clouds: yes, they were greenish in real life, but not nearly as much as on the photos. Because I didn’t have a pod to hold my camera stable, I had to use Cécile’s head (it’s a good thing she’s so tiny!) as a stabilizer and I must say it worked pretty well. :p

If you ever get the chance to see the northern light, you need to do it. Here are some of my favorite photos.

On our way back from eating out at the Laundromat Cafe, a cosy place where you actually can do your laundry while drinking coffee, we came across this very cute cat. You could tell he was used to humans as he wanted to play with us. Twas raining so we pet him for a bit and then proceeded further.

Standing in front of our door, the cat suddenly snook up on us and went inside! Aww! It followed us home! We gave him some water and played for a while before calling the owner to tell him we found his cat. His name was Scott Pippen and he was about 10 months old.

The day I’ll get my own cat will be the happiest day of my life. OK, maybe not my happiest but it will be close to it. :P

Gahh… Must finish post on blog…Zombie…

Having nothing on your mind is great…Having nothing on your mind while you’re at the Blue Lagoon is grrreeeaaat. The Blue Lagoon is a huge geothermal spa that you must have visited once at the very least if you’re in Iceland. I’ll let the photos speak (jealous?). This was exactly one week ago by the way.

The nephrology department was not much different from the general medicine department so not much to report regarding that.

You wonder if it took me the whole week to write this post? Yes.

Bai! :P

You know what I’ve always wondered ever since I arrived in Iceland? Why the hell do all Icelandic people have -dóttir or -sson in their last name? They might all have the same parents and those parents must have been really busy might be ones answer, but there is some logic behind it. I did mention Icelandic names were difficult to memorise, but that’s not what I’m talking about here.

How Icelandic people get their names is an ancient tradition that you won’t find very quickly elsewhere. I’m just gonna use the names mentioned in the Visitor’s Guide I grabbed at the theatre in Reykjavík (of which I realised the book costed 980 ISK just now, but I snagged it without paying! Woops.) since I’m not too good at making up examples of Icelandic names.

First, if a man is called Leifur Eiríksson and he marries Thórdís Haraldsdóttir, Thórdís Haralsdóttir will stay the same. That’s already one difference from most cultures we know, where the woman will take over the name of the man. Second, if Thórdís and Leifur have a son, he would have Leifsson as a last name while a daughter would have Leifsdóttir as a last name. These suffixes readily state if that person is a son of daughter of said prefix which is the father’s name.

First names are way too common and because the last names refer to their fathers, Icelandic people are always referred by their first plus last name, never alone is the last name used.

Funny, innit? I would be called Hao Ran Shenglisson and my son would be called X Haoransson (Haorannesson? Harrson?). Haha. I am curious to hear how you would have been called!

iMovie actually worked pretty well, but I couldn’t choose music outside my iTunes library so I had to improvise a bit. I hope you like it!

Icelandic people might not find The Golden Circle the most interesting attraction anymore, but boy did we enjoy our first trip outside Reykjavík! The Golden Circle consists of Gulfoss (a waterfall), Geysir and þingvellir (a national park where history has been written). It was everything I expected it to be, it was gorgeous. Totally worth getting up for at 7.30 in the weekend. This post will contain quite a few photos, so without further ado click for more!

The weather forecast said it would be around 4 degrees with some sun. And the sun did come up when we were at Skálholt, a church we visited during a short stop. The church looked nice, but it was the scenery that was really breathtaking.

Skálholt

Next up would be Gulfoss, the waterfall I’ve been dying to see ever since I saw photos of my fellow students from Maastricht. The weather got worse and it began to snow, it was windy and I was freezing my fingers off while taking photos of this beautiful waterfall. I recorded a lot of video as well which I’m planning to edit when I get back home. I slipped a few times too while I was recording (also on camera), but it was all totally worth it! Here are some shots that’ll give you a little taste of what we’ve seen.

Gulfoss

I thought it wouldn’t be so cold at the Geysir with all the steam coming off the hot springs, but no. I was so tempted to touch the water, but the temperature of it is really hot: 80 to 100 Celcius degrees! The smell of eggs was obviously in the air and I’m afraid I don’t have a photo of the Geysir erupting because I was actually filming it. I highly doubt I’ll be able to upload it here, but I’ll give it a try.

Geysir area

The funny thing at þingvellir was that if you look on the photos the higher black wall of rocks is actually from the American plate while we were standing the European plate. Regarding this being a national park, you can read up on that on the signs I made photos of when I get back home.

þingvellir

I cannot wait to travel to other places. Wait for the video! I Like Iceland!

The last couple of days has been met with mixed feelings regarding the hospital life.

When I had finished with my surgery rotation in The Netherlands, I knew for sure that I would want surgery for Iceland as well. I tried to switch, but unfortunately was unable to anymore as everything was fully booked. Sigrún, our coordinator here in Iceland, said that if I had been earlier, it still would have been possible. Talk about pouring salt on the wound. Alas, nothing to do about it and I would just have to make the best of Internal Medicine here in Iceland.

Internal Medicine is all about communication and for someone who doesn’t speak Icelandic, it is terribly hard for me to work efficiently in the hospital. Even after you’ve introduced yourself as a foreign student many people tend to speak Icelandic. Don’t get me wrong, Icelandic people (not just those in the hospital) are very nice. Many of them have been very helpful to me. It’s just that in the hospital I have to ask for a translation many times and it gets really tiresome.

My usual day starts in the morning with the report, a summary of patients that were admitted the past 24 hours. Some students have said that there is some education at times as well, but I’ve not had any so far and thus every report has practically been useless for me. The discussion of patients after that is alright as the doctors there try to involve me as much as possible, but the rounds are mostly a waste of time again. Most people in General Internal Medicine are crippled, old people who don’t speak English very well so I can’t go and speak with them for myself either. I hope you understand that this part of the morning is not always something I look forward to.

I plan everything ahead when it comes to school (not nearly as much in my private life though) and you can’t imagine how lost I felt in the afternoons. I didn’t have much of a roster. Staying at the ward in the afternoon is not a very good idea as it mostly consists of administration and filling in forms. There is an occasional venapuncture, but I’m not going to wait all day for just that. So what the hell am I supposed to do then? Other Icelandic interns have lectures (see the post after the previous for that…), practicals and other things in the afternoon, all in Icelandic. Okay, maybe not all of them as one of the practicals of the surgical (!) interns was given in English because I was present (which was actually pretty good). I’ll be trying a hematology practical next week. Luckily, I finally managed to go to the OR and just asked if I could join a surgery. Even though I wasn’t able to scrub in (I was so close being able to, but then the surgery intern came in at the last moment), it felt great to be in the OR again.

That last part and the conversations with my supervisor, Jón,  and intern coordinator Gunny has given me some hope again. Jón is a gastroenterologist and actually studied in Eindhoven and Nijmegen so he speaks Dutch, a very nice surprise. He was very kind and gave me lots of things I will be doing during my stay in the hospital. Gunny is also called the ‘grandmother of all interns’ and I can see why: she takes such good care of us. She gaves us a tour through the hospital, a locker, some practical papers, a list of Icelandic words commonly used in the hospital and their translations…and so on. Plus, we finally got our ID cards. I thought that Dutch people had trouble pronouncing my name, but try Icelandic people! I’m glad I can finally just show them my ID card after introducing myself because my introductions will automatically follow with either “what?” or a horrible pronunciation of my name.

Here are our cards. A læknanemi is a medical student, a Kandidat is a 7th year medical student (more like an ‘arts assistent’ in Dutch), a læknir is a doctor and a sérfræðingur is a specialized doctor.

It may sound I’m not having a very good time at the hospital, but that’s not true. I just whine a lot. I guess you all know. Tomorrow is something to look forward to: The Golden Circle! Finally some real photos of what Iceland’s got to offer! I’ll see you!

Remember how I was talking about those godforsaken ugly clothes and how I would bring my own doctor’s coat? And so I did. The difference between the nursing clothes and my coat is that it has short sleeves, is longer and does not come with horrible trousers. That is what doctors in The Netherlands wear. Apparently, that is also not what they had in mind in Iceland. The doctors in Iceland wear a coat with long sleeves, no trousers and it’s a bit shorter than our coat. So not that much of a difference right? Wrong. After having worn my lovely coat all morning including during lunchtime the specialist of my department, who I was going to see some outpatients with,  said what awful clothing I was wearing. I’m sorry? She quickly went with me to the basement where the clothes are stored and made sure I got one of these coats all of the Icelandic doctors wear. The people working there were already wondering where the hell I got my coat from. The specialist and them were talking and laughing a bit and on the way back to the outpatient clinic she said I looked like a lab (or tech) guy from the pressure cabine (where they treat people with diving sickness) or even the women who take bloodsamples from patients for tests. I was actually kind of insulted, I like my coat! But I guess it’s just not what they’re used to here. As my roommate and fellow intern Cécile stated: “So…You were there as pretty much the only asian guy in the hospital wearing, in whatIcelandic people would say, women’s hospital clothings?” That’s my bad karma for laughing at you guys (and the wind kept blowing like mad!), right there.

This day was tiresome and I’m not sure why. Probably the same reason as it would have been in The Netherlands though: getting up at 06.30 o’clock is just not doing it for me. O well, time to go to bed.

Twas windy, twas cold and I did not want to get up at 07:00 o’clock. How is that any different when I’m in The Netherlands? It’s not.

It would be my first day at the hospital in Fossvogur and while I wasn’t excited at all a week before, I still didn’t sleep very well yesterday. Nevertheless I got up, had breakfast and we went out for the busstop. Did I mention it was windy? Man, it blew and I did not like it! Apparently the weather in Iceland can change in an instant and it is very unpredictable. One day you’ll have some sun with a reasonable temperature, the next day it can be snowing and freezing. You know, I was laughing at you guys in Holland with temperatures going below minus 10 degrees while we were comfortably sitting at around 0 degrees. It definitely did not feel like 0 degrees today however and I sure hope I don’t get a payback from y’all for laughing at you.

We met with Sigrún, the coördinator for Maastricht University in Reykjavík, who was already speaking with another exchange student from Denmark. A nice guy who said he was living in an apartment which wasn’t even bigger than our bathroom (7 m²). Our apartment is way too big for the two of us and we were glad to have him if he chooses to live with us. We’ll see!

Sigrún gave us a tour in the hospital and after getting our godforsaken ugly hospital clothings (which, in hindsight, were actually nurse clothings) we were dropped off at our departments which was General Internal Medicine in my case. And that was pretty much it. What the hell am I supposed to do here? Helga, an endocrinologist, introduced me to some people who I would follow for the first two weeks. They were really nice. An Icelandic intern who was also new explained some things to me while we doing rounds, a Kandidat (a 7th years medicine student if you will) who was very kind and gave me suggestions what I could do after the visits and a studying Internist who offered to drive me home!

After the visits I really had no idea what I could do because the staff said that it’s mostly paperwork in the afternoon. I asked the Kandidat (sorry, I forgot your name! Icelandic names are hard to memorise…) what I could do and he honestly didn’t really know either. He said he knew some foreign students who’d just go home at 13:00 because there wasn’t anything interesting left to do for them after the visits. I wasn’t really planning on going home that early so he then suggested I should have a look at other specialties and see if I can do anything there. Coincidentially, a very friendly anesthesiologist came in and he offered me to come with him to the OR. He explained where I could get changed, where the surgeries would take place and that I was welcome if I wanted to attend some. Awesome.

That’s good and all, but not everything went peachy. The Icelandic intern said they have lectures in the afternoon and I asked her for an email so that I could mail the lecturegivers to see if they were prepared to give their lectures in English. The guy from the email forwarded my request to the lecturegivers and they gave me a reply in Icelandic which sounded something like this (after using Google Translate): “In my opinion, it is unreasonable to change this. He does not belong in these lectures. He’s either already had them or otherwise he will get them later.” The rest of the lecturegivers all sent a mail saying they all agree. That’s such bullshit. I mean come on, what kind of education is this? They’re either too lazy, too scared, exceptionally bad in English or a combination of those three to translate their lectures. Well screw your lectures, I’ll go do something more useful.

Other than that, the day was good. And I’ll definitely bring my own white coat tomorrow! I’ll see you guys!